This research looks at the adoption of Internet and mobile applications comparing the factors that influence loyalty and satisfaction in both Japan and the United States. We derived a research model for and tested related hypotheses with data collected from online shopping consumers in both Japan and the United States. In the mobile market, we found Innovativeness to be an important relationship with Behavioral Intention for both the US and Japan. However we found that Attitude was more important in predicting Loyalty in the US while Innovativeness was key to predicting Loyalty in Japan. Loyalty was a strong predictor of Satisfaction in both the US and Japan.

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Many banks have introduced mobile banking services like mobile credit cards checking account balances, setting up bill payment, transferring funds, and short message services (including push and pull methods). While these services offer convenience and add value, it is necessary to consider whether customers will adopt the technology. This study will examine the many variables that affect the consumer's decision to adopt the technology. We concluded that self-efficacy, behavioral intention, attitude towards use, and user information base readiness (UIBR: awareness, knowledge, experience, exposure) are the major constructs in the adoption of mobile banking. This model can be used to determine the marketing methods, designs, and functionality of mobile banking offered in the United States and Japan.

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This paper discusses what kind of characteristic and factor determine a SNS user's degree of activeness, based on the log data of user behavior of "mixi".
The results; The number of interactive friend influences the degree of activeness. A certain number of friend exists on the highest degree of activeness.
Log data is offered, after being modified to the form where an individual is not specified.

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Social networking service was utilized and communication with much others was attained.
New human relations which were not until now, such as a friend and an acquaintance, a hobby and taste, and an alma mater, are built by it.
On the other hand, the individual and the company have also generated the example involved in damage or a trouble by generating of slander slander, a damage caused by rumors, etc.
It has tried to establish SNS literacy through consideration of security about the prevention and correspondence to such a situation.

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This research looks at the adoption of social media (SM) applications comparing the factors that influence adoption at work. This exploratory study intends to examine factors of SM adoption that are common in both Japan and the United States. After a comprehensive literature review, we derived a research model for and tested related hypotheses with data collected from respondents in Japan (n=365) and the US (n=304). We found organizations using SM for product advertising (82%), research (58%), sales (47%), recruiting (39%), developing communities (33%) and improving customer service (35%). In this paper we analyze work-related variables between Japan and the US and found significant differences in the use of SM to improve job performance and effectiveness.

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This paper explores the current trend of business-method patents in Japan. About ten years ago, business method patent (business model patent) used to be a buzzword in e-business industry. However, nowadays, the trend in business-method patents is different from those days. This paper surveys which company or which industry is aggressive in business-method patent, and analyses the patent strategies of the leader companies of e-business area.

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Service industries are strongly connected to the intangible assets of each country as compared with the manufacturing industries, and value chains and interfaces also have strong originality. And the character is not necessarily visualized. However, while the dependence to service industries increases and globalization also progresses, it has been an important issue to get to know the feature of the service industries. From such an awareness, since this paper takes a close-up of the feature of service industries, it compares industrial structure change. And the framework of “industry architecture" which has appeared in the dynamic capability theory examines the result, and it shows the industry architecture of Japanese service companies.

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Servie-Dominat-Logic approach of marketing studies gives a important suggestion for innovation studies. This approach gives a new perspective for business activities beyond resource-based-approch and capabilities approach. The relationship between companies and customers is explained by distinguishing operant resources from operand ones. A new concept of 'service' instead of 'products and/or services' explains a new role of company as co-creater of customer value. Innovations exist in the value creation processes of customers.

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Despite the growing importance of emerging markets, innovation research is still biased towards developed countries. In this paper, we focus on the innovation from emerging countries, and describe its features through theoretical research and case analysis. In particular, the active researches and practices of competitive intelligence for enterprises, as well as the innovation system and the source of the competitiveness in China, are clarified. Finally the paper concludes that competitive intelligence plays an important role in innovation system.

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In our former studies, it is shown that about one fourth of the joint inventions between industry and academia are transferred to enterprises before they are filed. Transfers of the fruits of joint research alliance is considered to be a unique phenomenon in knowledge flows in Japan, since in U.S., joint inventions are rarely transferred from universities to enterprises. Based on quantitative analysis of patent database, we discuss the importance and efficiency of knowledge flows induced by transferred patents from the viewpoint of allowance rate, technologies, and networks between industry and academia.

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The efficiency in social welfare services is required in the central government argument. We remark after the 3.11 disaster child care services preferentially executed as to symbolize hope for the future. All around residential areas those business have expected to the new official system pending as ever. Following the previous study I examined two districts of Yokohama City with subdividing local markets and culture.

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Requisites of superior firms have been enumerated in various respects both in East and the West, and names of superior firm themselves have been done also. Then, on those firms of this country, their securities report data are analyzed by applying the framework of standardized growth accounting having 3 input factors of capital, labor etc, assuming production function that value added is expressed as relationship with machinery investment, information investment and labor cost. Comparing the requisites for superiority with the analysis results, the sufficiency or propriety of requisites and conversely the propriety of assessment method of growth accounting and production function are studied for trying to reflect the these study results to business design.

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M&A has come to be carried out in every type of industry in Japan as one of the strategies those are improve in group organization efficiently. Moreover, the laws-and-regulations relief and systemic revision for making business reorganization easier to carry out are performed frequently. However, it is doubted whether the information about such management strategy is disclosed exactly to the stakeholder. So, by this research, the Business Evaluation Indexes were computed from the numerical value of the earning statement, the balance sheet, and the cash flow statement which the company is indicating, positive analysis was conducted, and it was considered whether the characteristic financial to the phenomenon of the business reorganization which affected it to the stakeholder would be seen.

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After the East Japan Great Earthquake,the reconstruction from the earthquake are being developed. Regeneration of SMEs is important for the reconstruction of the region. We interviewed with 23 SMEs in Miyagi Prefecture on last autumn. At this result, we found the three points of regeneration of SMEs.

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An enterprise SNS can potentially contribute to knowledge creation in an enterprise. For example, informal communication encourages to build social capital and information sharing promotes sharing for tacit knowledge. On the other hand, there are also concerns for the validity of enterprise SNS. For example, cases of concern are the risk of information leakage ,and the mismatch in corporate culture. What is the framework of these expectations and concerns? We have performed a questionnaire for employees of five companies to clarify the factors of expectations and concerns in the enterprise SNS. We have classified the factors of concern within the company and expectations for the SNS.

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New types of institutions and services suitable for the Aged Society are expected to be introduced, and the government also proposes a new concept for peoples' collaboration, “New Public Commons" which means various people voluntarily work together. However, the new type of collaboration may cause conflicts among the co-workers about objectives, activities and the way of management.
The key questions are how to share the needed information among various co-workers and how to design an efficient communication network among them. Here by using a modified cooperative board game, “FORBIDDEN ISLAND", we simulated the co-workers' behaviors and observed the relation between the volume of communication and the productivity of collaboration.

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We analyze a tweet system in a software development company. In software development companies, many people get sick, take a long-term rest, and leave companies. We think this is one caused by the lack of communications among employees. This tweet system can solve these by the contribution of the employee's communication and potential team power to the brewing in the software development company. In this company, because of remote places and members divided from other projects, they make communications improvement effort variously. We find that positive/negative tendency of content of tweet related to each person's feeling value and his/her attitude to this tweet system.

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In this paper, I propose an analytical method for international communication using a multilingual gaming or gaming simulation. The term ‘service outreach' means the service for knowledge delivery or sharing using the communication service. If we extract and reuse the service component elements from the existing game, we can develop enormously valuable services. In this paper, I release the findings of the investigation into the service experience during the gaming and make specific mention to get a new service evaluation model for service outreach.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of agent-based social simulation (ABSS) in a decision making process under uncertain and complex problem situations. It is too difficult to determine a common purpose of the stakeholders who have various concerns and values. Moreover we cannot easily identify the stakeholders who should be included in the decision making process. Conventional systems approaches are useful to explore purposes and to ensure fairness in the problem situations. In addition to the approaches, we try to introduce ABSS to support a policy making among various stakeholders in a specific organization. Consequently we reveal that ABSS is helpful to deal with the problem situations successfully.

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This paper considers knowledge creation in relation to improvements on the production line in the manufacturing department of Nissan Motor Company and aims to clarify the specific substance of leadership that enables such knowledge creation. By adopting a new approach that adds a first, second-person's viewpoint to the theory of knowledge creation, this research will attempt to define the specific substance of leadership that enables organisational knowledge creation through qualitative analysis and interpretation of the interviews. In order to explain leadership for enabling knowledge creation, this study proposes the model of the interaction enabling knowledge creation by leader-follower.

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Organizational knowledge-creating processes rely on tacit
abilities of knowing and the creativity of organization members.
This paper proposes the use of a systems methodology for
cultivating and spreading such abilities among an organization.
For the purpose, I first explain the SECI model of rganizational
knowledge-creating processes. Then the soft systems methodology
is compared with the SECI model, and is updated accordingly.
An application process for this systems methodology is resented,
which can be formally seen as an organizational knowledge-creating process. Finally, it is shown that this kind of systems methodology may be utilized for spreading the tacit abilities of talented persons to other organization members.

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It is critical issues for companies to create services or products which have market advantages for long period of time by understanding the market needs deeply, under today's mature markets. In this paper, we examine the construction of the tools which support the decision making for new business development by applying know-how of companies effectively.

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The concept of utility of von Neumann and Morgenstern treated utility as position on a line, in analogy of Euclidean geometry. This simplification does not help analyzing the preference which have multi-criteria. Moreover, this simplicity make N-M model not to need to specify the original point, at the same time, however, make it difficult to take "status quo" of utility into count in the decision model. This paper seeks the possibility to treat utility as vector, not as position on a line, and utilize it in utility function. The paper start analysis from Euclidean vector (three dimension) but it can be widened to n-dimension by using the concept of vector space.

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This study aimed to analyze an impact of self-esteem on knowledge sharing motivation and behavior in business organizations. The self esteem was measured by the competence dimension and the social maladjustment dimension. Data were gathered by using questionnaires from 2,000 employees working in various business organizations. The analysis of the data revealed that; 1) not only the competence but also the social maladjustment had positive effects on extrinsic knowledge sharing motivation, 2) only the competence had positive effects on intrinsic motivation.

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This study reveals the factors that hinder the sustainability of organic farming and proposes the Producer-Consumer Collaboration Model as a possible solution to the sustainability of organic farming. The feasibility of the model was tested and analyzed where the researcher studied the organic farm, “Atsuta-Nouen" and “Nappa-no-Kai," a consumer group that purchases products from Atsuta-Nouen. In conclusion, 22 requirements that must be fulfilled to implement this model are proposed.

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The word “business design" is at intervals heard but rarely seen as a research theme. Instead of design, the word “analysis" is used in fields of economics or management. Generally speaking, “analysis" is opposed to against to “synthesis", and “design" is not “analysis" but “synthesis". Moreover, “design" corresponds to “plan" but “analysis" corresponds to “check" in the PDCA management cycle. Also in the project life cycle, although positioning “design" is different every project, “design" is done at the last stage of preparation or at the initial stage of implementation, or over both stages.

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Conceptual Form model is a formal model of theoretically derivable form structures from given DB structures. In this paper, we propose a good conceptual form materializer, which has good look & feel by using Ajax controls. This tool has the following features; 1) Opened to identified plural users, 2) In designing a form, tentative DB structure is derived, 3) Reference path is definable with given DB, 4) Designing and browsing modes are selective. This paper introduces some actual images of its theoretical application.

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Exceptions are the events or situations that prevent business processes from completing normally. When exceptions such as cancellation of customer order occur, additional time and resources are often needed to resolve them. It is important for enterprise to pay attention to exception; for reducing exceptions efficiently and effectively may trace business process oriented improvement or innovation. In this study, a conceptual level pattern for reducing exceptions is proposed and discussed. In this study, authors conduct a case study in a certain small and medium Japanese company. This study contributes not only to those who work upon business process re-designs in the practice but also to those who research business process management in the academic fields.

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Various researches and educational methods for grasping business structures by means of Conceptual Data-modeling (CDM) have been reported.
In this report, we describe the process that we proposed to improve business of a clinic by the CDM method as a theme of PBL (Project Based Learning) and we analyze how effectively the method worked.
We got the entire picture of the business as we gradually incorporated contents into models, which were obtained from a few hour hearings with each department of the clinic.
The models allowed us to summarize obscure issues into core problems and to make feasible proposals to improve their business which is bounded tightly to medical constraints.

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The improvement in the return on investment(ROI) of information systems is becoming more and more important for justifying the cost of information systems. Methods of evaluating ROI have been proposed, which usually extract and define quantitative indices meeting the goal of the information systems before they are developed, then measure the indices during they are in operation. This paper proposes, on the other hand, a requirement framework that defines extraction processes of ROI and the information extracted by the processes, which is applicable even when quantitative indices are not defined before information systems are developed. Application of this framework to five organizations using an information system has shown that this framework enables valid extraction of the ROI.

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In the job market for new graduates in Japan, the batch employment system has been carried out for a long time, and many companies and students are performing adoption and job hunting activities. However, it is difficult to grasp the detailed motion inside the market. In this research, the process of job matching was clarified using the agent-based simulation (ABS).
As a result, it was shown that the factor which is confusing the job market is the difference of distribution of a students' level and distribution of the companies' level. Furthermore, it became clear how the result of job-hunting activities changes by the differences in the students' behavioral trait. Now, it was able to show how students should tackle their job-hunting activities.

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There are some restaurant chains growing rapidly, though some of the chains are lagging behind of standardizing business process that are supposed to be done. This paper present the analysis result of case study at back office process at restaurant, and result about effectiveness from feasibility test for prototype system the author had developed. Provision of the organization to make entrenched improvement effectiveness is also discussed in this paper.

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Sales forecasting and shift control of personnel is a very important issue in the food service industry, especially in the field of restaurant chain stores, however, there are often managed relying on intuition of staff. In addition to unstandardized work process, difficulty of accumulating experiences caused by frequent personnel rotation can be considered as a reason for frequent inaccuracy of sales forecasting. In this paper, the analysis result about formative factor of sales is described. Analysis was conducted using historical business data of a certain restaurant chain stores in this study. The results were compared with forecasted result using current procedure by intuition.

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This study examines effects of technological knowledge transfer on post merger knowledge transfer based on theories of organizational learning and absorptive capacity. Although prior studies on mergers tend to take the standpoint of firms that merge others, this study examines post-merger technological knowledge transfers by taking both sides of firms that merge others and those that are merged by others. By using patent and merger data in the Japanese chemical industry from 1996 to 2008, this study shows that technological knowledge transfer occurs when merging firms' low technological similarity and merged firms' high technological similarity are both high.

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Infrastructure industries comprise various public and private organizations. It is supposed that infrastructure industries should achieve a balance between values of public nature and profitability, and that they should create and share new values. In this study, we focus on water-supply corporations, and discuss inter-organizational values creation and sharing from the perspective of knowledge creation.

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Effective business process requires a suitable combination of process design, human resource, and technology. To achieve a good match between people and process, there is an interest question that whether general business process understanding (BPU) is also important for employees at work. This study proposes that the benefits of BPU generates from supporting employee's work: communication, process-oriented thinking, and self-efficacy. Through a study of a Japanese company, external communication, process-oriented thinking and self-efficacy, but not internal communication, are found to be positively associated with BPU. This study suggests that to help employees to develop an in-depth BPU is good for organizations to improve their effectiveness and creativity.

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In this presentation, we study the effect of TVCM on consumer behaivior by using questionnaire based single source data. Especially, we use the framework of consumer behaivior study, then divide some stages of purchase behavior. Moreover, we discuss who and what kind of items are influenced by TVCM.

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The purpose of this study is to conduct the structural analysis of industries and to examine the current status of a firm's IT (Information Technology) utilization in Akita based on the Porter's theoretical frameworks: five competitive forces and value chain. Empirical data from 357 firms is analyzed. Results indicate that the strongest competitive force in Akita is “bargaining power of buyers" and the weakest one is “threat of new entrants". Furthermore, this study shows firms in Akita recognize “inbound logistics" and “firm infrastructure" as more important business value activities for IT application. The importance for applying IT to “operations" and “technological development" activities is low. Some critical competitive forces and business value activities necessary to encourage IT utilization are identified.

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With the development of IT, data that can be acquired has become a lot and variably.
The business activities directly linked to profitability is able to take advantage of management information such as demand forecasting, and to promote the advancement of management activities.
In the underlying business activity of interest, because of rapidly changing business environment, such as globalization, it is difficult to take advantage of management information.
In this report, we describe how we can provide the information to support management activities to be a source of revenue management activities, use the system. Based on a technique called "Structure on Matrix" will be described in the case of cost accounting system as how to apply concrete

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In order to provide the nicety administrative services corresponding to each citizen's situation, it is a very important policy concern in the electronic administration of our country to realize the National ID System that can be used widely in government-and-people service.
In this paper, administrative services were arranged for each individual event, and we analyzed those individual events based on frequency, number of citizens involved, number of procedures for the event and so forth. Then we classified those individual events using homogeneity analysis.
Based on these classifications, typical administrative services are clarified and we propose which individual event should be deeply investigated based on the classification.

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The number of firms going private is increasing in the current decade. My survey includes all companies that went private between 2006 and 2011, and compared with all listed companies at that time as random sampling. The survey follows some previous studies in terms of cash in hand and the percentage of shareholding by the managemnt and the largest shareholder.

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Solar cell market is increasing. The solar cell share of Japan rapidly fell from 50% in 2004 to 9% in 2010. On the other hand, China drastically increased the production share to 43% in 2010, and overwhelms foreign countries. Why could China become number 1 in the solar cell? There are many similarities of technologies among solar cell, semiconductor and LCD. The solar cell has very simple process. Therefore, it is easy to lean and transfer the maturated semiconductor technologies to the solar cell technology. Thus, China entered to the PV business and grew it to No. 1.

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This paper argues that a cross-platform strategy for the computer platform providers. The analysis of VMware case demonstrates the mechanism changing the balance of power between layers by introducing cross-platform functions, i.e. “Intervention" and “Bridging" into the existing market. Consequently, the three effects are propounded, which indicates 1: interrupting direct interface between upper layer and lower layer, 2: weakening selective inevitability for same level layers, and 3: adding liquidity of each accessible user group.

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We focused the low rate of employment problem of the new university graduate market in Japan, where there is the gap of requiring level between the companies and the students. To solve this complex problem, we took multi-agented simulation system approach and then found a mechanism of the smooth job-hunting for university students and recruitment activity plan for companies.

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This study shows how to realize innovation, and make active organizations in big companies.
A bureaucracy and sectionalism spread in most companies when the companies grow up, and fall into “big company desease".Thus, it becomes difficult for the big companies to correspond to environmental changes and to realize innovation.We picked up the establishment period of Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. as an example, and studied the way to overcome the “big company desease".As a result, we found that it is effective for sales engineers who have authority to ensure the environment of demonstrating the entrepreneurship. Futhermore, “carve-out entrepreneur" is one of the examples and we found that this is effective for risk and hedgings.

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After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, companies are required to rethink their business model aimed at increasing profits by becoming more competitive and efficient. Meanwhile people have begun to pay attention to sustainable businesses. Especially after the earthquake, Japanese long-established businesses have attracted attention within Japan and from abroad. However the secrets of these businesses' longevity and the mechanisms have just started to be studied. We will consider the secrets of their longevity and the mechanisms, and discuss about Japanese style management by examining some earthquake cases.

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Became a huge problem in our country recently accounting fraud case, in this paper, from the perspective of information system and internal control, analyzed using an external investigation committee report of recent accounting fraud case.
This analysis, in-house business processes, communications, internal audit, conducted from the perspective of external audit, and referring to the relationship with information system.
I make suggestions for improving the system of internal control based on the results of this analysis, corresponding to the accounting fraud.

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It's become common sense to use a cloud computing for an enterprise information system, but they are still confusing on how to use it.
We think Hybrid Cloud is the answer of this question.
Though Cloud Computing consists of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, most people seem to discuss without thinking which layer they are talking about.
And so we studied a hybrid architecture of each layer and found problems for implementation and operation.

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An IS could be fully functional under the environmental situations assumed beforehand at the design. The environmental condition in the society in Japan which is a homogeneous environmental condition fundamentally is a tacit agreement, and is not even discussed explicitly in an IS design. However, such information systems cannot work well under international business and critical conditions, but become even malfunction. At the East Japan Earthquake Disaster, the ISs had failed in many scenes except for some special cases, and the unsuitable environmental conditions have been exposed. This paper discusses the design concept of a social IS through the narrative analysis to the victims of Hitachinaka, Ibaraki where has been discarded from the information networks after the Mega Earthquake.

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It is theoretically known that an innovation in an organization is made by interactions among organizational members. For the innovation, there is a need for systems analysis (SA) that helps the members be conscious of their environments. The SA is considered different from the conventional third-person-perspective SA. The author has been proposing an idea that appropriates activity theory as diagrammatic resources in phenomenology. It means practicing phenomenology with the diagrammatic resource of activity theory. In the viewpoint of the philosophy of Dilthey, job enrichment theory of Hachman et al, and others, we examine whether the method and diagrammatic resource help organizational members become conscious of the environment and conditions.

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